Putin, Sarkozy to meet in St. Pete on Wednesday, discuss Russian-French relations, Syria - Kremlin aide
MOSCOW. June 14 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will have an informal meeting with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the National Congress Palace (Constantine Palace) in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said.
"The president will have an informal dinner with his old acquaintance, Nicolas Sarkozy, on the evening of June 15," Ushakov told journalists at a news briefing on Tuesday.
The conversation will be off the record, and Putin and Sarkozy might address any subjects, including the state and prospects of Russian-French relations, possible upcoming contacts, and regional problems, he said.
"It is quite possible that Nicolas Sarkozy might like to know our judgments about the situation in the Middle East, Syria, and so on," Ushakov said.
Putin and Sarkozy plan to discuss the state and prospects of Russian-French relations in the political, trade-investment, and cultural fields, he said.
Ushakov pointed out that the meeting would take place at a time when "principal mechanisms of bilateral interaction have been frozen by the French side."
In particular, the intergovernmental commission at the prime ministerial level has not been convened since November 2013, the cooperation council on security attended by foreign and defense ministers has not met since October 2012, and the major inter-parliamentary commission is not working, he said.
At the same time, "the upper parliamentary chambers are cooperating actively against this background, and the French National Assembly on April 28, and the Senate on June 8, passed resolutions calling for lifting the anti-Russian sanctions."
While trade between Russia and France dropped by 36.2% in 2015, the volume of direct French investment in Russia's economy grew by $1 billion in the first three quarters of last year, Ushakov said. "None of the nearly 500 French companies operating in Russia have left the market," he said.